“The Art of Wonder,” an exhibit of 15 Mendocino County artists who push the boundaries of various mediums to create stirring and surprising perceptions in the viewer, opened May 23 at the Grace Hudson Museum. The exhibition was organized by Grace Hudson Museum Curator Alyssa Boge and Director David Burton, with additional help from established veteran artists Linda MacDonald and Bob Comings.
“Many artists in this exhibition are trying to answer questions—’Who am I? What is this life?'” Boge comments. Given that the show is about wonder, there are no firm answers, only a splendid range of responses. The artwork in the exhibition ranges from the overtly religious, as with icon paintings by Father Damian, Abbot of the Holy Transfiguration Monastery in Redwood Valley, to Antoinette von Grone’s playful and loving depictions of animals who are dressed in pre-20th century European aristocratic attire, thus imbuing them with a sense of humanness.
In addition to painting, mediums employed include photography, metal, collage, mosaic, and sculpture. A 40-inch-wide, seven-foot-tall ceramic sculpture of a blade of grass, created by the late Sonya Popow, is prominently featured. Denver Tuttle creates illusionary sculptures made of pliable reflective material, which he then photographs from inside. Four of these photographs appear in the show along with one of his wall-mounted sculptures. Red Wolf uses layers of epoxy, acrylic paint, and special effects films on treated metal substrate that create illusions of depth and in some cases a hologram effect. What unites all the artworks is, in Boge’s words, “deep investigation of the everyday, along with a connection with something beyond the everyday,” whether it is a Ukrainian Catholic saint, a polar bear that seems to be posing for its portrait, or a landscape bombarded by cosmic rays.
Micah Sanger, proprietor of the Visionary Arts Gallery in Mendocino, portrays the hidden forces that pervade our universe. He paints not only what the naked human eye can see, but what the telescope and electron microscope reveal. “By the Bay,” for example, portrays a group of people socializing and relaxing, their figures flooded with brilliant washes of light and representations of energy and matter, showing us our place in an exquisite, multibillion-year dance. And yet Sanger insists that his work isn’t some twee fantasy or idle hallucination. “I’m just painting what my eyes are seeing,” he states. “First things I paint are the trees, the sunlight, the earth.” After that he paints “the whole field,” which he feels emanating from the trees and the ground.
Sanger grew up around the dairy farms of rural Wisconsin, where his father was a country preacher, and who later was invited to France to serve as a military chaplain. The family’s time in Europe exposed Sanger to Renaissance art, with the work of Leonardo da Vinci being especially influential. Da Vinci’s study for “The Adoration of the Magi” layered a sketch of the Biblical story over an architectural drawing of a Greek temple, creating a sense of the divine pervading the drawing’s mathematically exact perspective lines. Sanger saw that da Vinci had realized “a cosmic reality pervading time and space,” which includes our day-to-day existence. He adds, “I was like a rocket that was taking off right when I realized this.”
Painter and collagist Jazzminh Moore crafts images that mediate between dream and reality, layering fields of color and geometric shapes over self-portraits, natural landscapes, and abandoned buildings. Her canvases vibrate with the quest for connection and meaning that animates her life. Raised on a back-to-lander community in Oregon, Moore, like many artists, made her way to New York as a young woman. “Everything from then on was a hierarchical projection toward my goal,” she reflects. She secured representation with the Claire Oliver Gallery and began staging shows in galleries around the city. She was poised to start showing in museums when she decided to step off the fast track: “I needed less cement and more trees.” Moore now lives in Willits, and is a part-time faculty member and gallery director at Mendocino College.
Now comfortably ensconced in a rural area that’s brimming with art and artists, Moore continues to document her journey. Having painted portraits for most of her life, she wanted to break out into something different. It was then she realized that through the medium of collage, “I could communicate what I didn’t know I had to communicate…a way of unraveling my own emotions and thoughts and ideas.” The result was “Strange Coast,” in which a woman’s head, framed by varicolored squares, sprouts vertical streams of color, ribbons of water, and even a field of flowers. Moore created the vertical stream by layering mixed-media collage over the painted portrait of the woman’s head. “Occasionally a little genie visits you,” she allows.
Moore’s initiative in melding collage with painting proves Curator Boge’s point, which is that the artists in this show “push the boundaries of their mediums,” fostering a sense of wonder both in content and in form. The curation of the exhibit was a collaborative and creative event for Boge and Museum Director Burton as well. They singled out several artists, whom they had met over time, to include in the exhibit, visiting and conversing with them in their studios. They then decided to put out a call for open submissions in order to meet and include other artists. Willits-based Linda MacDonald and Bob Comings were then recruited to help jury the submissions. The result is an exhibit which invites us to stop and smell the roses—or marvel at a giant blade of grass.
“The Art of Wonder” will be on display through October 19. Several events are planned along with the exhibit, including an Assemblage Play Day taught by Spencer Brewer and Esther Siegel on June 28; a pop-up exhibit of Linda MacDonald’s nature paintings running from Aug. 1 through 17; a talk on painting icons by Father Damian on August 23; a virtual panel discussion with several artists featured in the exhibit on Sept. 11; and a collage workshop led by Rose Easterbrook on Sept. 27.
The Grace Hudson Museum is at 431 S. Main St. in Ukiah and is open Wednesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and Sunday from noon to 4:30 p.m. General admission is $7; $15 per family; $5 for students and seniors; free to all on the first Friday of the month; and always free to members, Native Americans, and active-duty military personnel. For more information please go to www.gracehudsonmuseum.org or call (707) 467-2836.
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